Aircraft cabins are commonly equipped with screens intended for use by passengers. These screens can be intended to inform passengers of flight parameters, but may also allow them to access multimedia content.
These screens are often embedded in a stationary element of the cabin, which makes their consultation inconvenient for passengers. Support members have therefore been developed for these screens, comprising an arm equipped with an end for fastening to a stationary element of the cabin and an articulation end to the screen. These support members are generally suitable for supporting the screen across from the cabin seat, so as to allow easy consultation of the screen by a passenger seated in said seat.
For safety reasons, aircraft certification requires that each screen present in the aircraft be retracted or stored during certain critical flight phases of the aircraft, in particular during takeoff and landing. Also in some cases, the passenger may wish, for his own comfort, for the screen to be retracted, for example so that the screen does not hinder his movement inside the aircraft.
As a result, the support members are designed to allow the movement of the screen between a usage position across from the cabin seat and a storage position. One known storage position is a position retracted inside an armrest of the seat. However, it is not always possible to provide such a storage position in the armrest of the seat when the armrest already incorporates other equipment, for example a cup holder or a control interface.
For several years, with the rapid growth of touch-sensitive tablets, passengers increasingly often board aircraft with their own touch-sensitive tablets, which they generally wish to consult during the flight. Most often, passengers do not have a support available to them, and must therefore place their tablets on their laps, which requires them to continuously tilt their head downward and may cause dorsal or cervical pain over time. Furthermore, the tablet can easily fall on the floor of the cabin and be damaged in case of sudden acceleration or deceleration of the aircraft, for example when the latter is in a turbulent zone.
In order to offset these drawbacks, tablet support devices for aircraft have recently been developed.
These support devices generally assume the form of an articulated arm having a proximal end fastened to the lateral rim of the cabin (better known as the “side ledge”) and a distal end provided with a jaw having dimensions appropriate for grasping and holding different models of tablets. This arm having to be stored during critical flight phases, the arm is most often able to be disassembled, which poses the problem of the storage of that arm, as well as the tablet that it supports. Furthermore, the large bulk of the side ledge, which already incorporates many pieces of equipment, most often prevents the retraction of the tablet and its support arm in the side ledge.